Tag Archives: benefits

Post by Christina S. Ho Senior Fellow and Project Director of the China Health Law Initiative O’Neill Institute The passage of universal health care, or (near-universal health care in this case), as Obama proclaimed, finally affirms in principle that as a society, we owe some security to one another against the life-and-death risks that can […]

Sara Rosenbaum is Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy. The O’Neill Institute’s Lester Feder spoke with her about the way forward after Republican Scott Brown’s election to represent Massachusetts in the US Senate. Lester Feder: What are the options that Congress has right […]

Another feature of the Senate bill that compares unfavorably with the House bill is its confusing definitions of insurance coverage. The House bill recognizes one category of private insurance, a “qualified health benefits plan,” which employers are obligated to provide and individuals to buy. This term is used throughout the bill. Only grandfathered plans are […]

Congress is not writing on a clean slate in enacting health care financing reform legislation. We already have, of course, massive federal health care programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Hundreds of pages of the bills Congress is considering are consumed by amendments to the statutes governing these programs. The legislation […]

The 1502 page legislative language of the Senate Finance bill became available yesterday on the Senate Finance Committee website. One of the many legal issues raised by this legislation relates to my October 8 post on the constitutionality of taxation. As you may recall, the Constitution requires that “Duties, Imposts and Excises,” generally called indirect […]